5 ms·

But M1 did provide fundamental increase in performance. It had only 4 performance cores, yet it could build my code 1.5 times faster than the mightiest i9 of th

But M1 did provide fundamental increase in performance. It had only 4 performance cores, yet it could build my code 1.5 times faster than the mightiest i9 of the time.

merb 4y ago
tbf the mightiest i9 mobile chip at the time was pretty bad, thermal wise and throttled extremly fast, besides that it was basically offered for ultrabooks... I mean the m1 did draw only half or even less power than the mightiest i9 mobile chip at the time (and still does lol)
ohgodplsno 4y ago
The M1 is fast for a few reasons: * It uses a fabrication process that noone has gotten their hands on yet. These have always been massive jumps, and giving access to that node to AMD and Intel gets them to similar performance (actually, they already are at similar performance with the same gen). * You're buying an un-upgradeable SoC. Soldered on everything means fast interconnect, while others have to play ball with standards that allow me to change components whenever I want. * It's a pretty damn good CPU. So, out of these three, Apple is responsible for 1/3. Dump an i9 on a SoC with a 3nm process and it'll eat the M1 alive. There's no "fundamental" increase.
- seniorivn 4y ago
  the fab process is their for grabs not by accident, they made the right call to invest in a longterm relationship with tsmc long time ago, so they have dibs on all cutting edge tech. un-upgradable SoC is a strategic design choice so which is basically part of the third reason which is their responsibility as you pointed out. So basically their success with m1,m2, etc is a well done implementation of a very ambitious strategy to disrupt the market. I don't see why it should be disputed.
- hedgehog 4y ago
  I'm not sure this is true, looking at say the i7-1260P in the XPS 13 it appears to turn in performance similar to the base M2 and half the battery life. M2 Max is twice as fast as the i7 and still 2x-3x the battery life, though also twice as expensive. I don't see any case that Intel's designs are somehow better than anyone else's let alone enough to "eat alive" any competitor design on equal process.
- brookst 4y ago
  I think you’re saying I shouldn’t be impressed that my M1 machine is much faster than my previous Intel machine, while having 3x the battery life, because Apple cheated or something. I don’t care. I’m impressed.
  - mwint 4y ago
    Yep. A lot of this thread feels like I’m being gaslit into believing the M1 machines were not the ridiculously huge jumps we all knew they were at the time. I don’t really care about benchmarks, these things have allowed me to do twice the work with half as much pain. That’s not incremental. Maybe they’re not great processors and it’s just Apple cheating in software/process-node/whatever. Great! Let me know when other manufacturers figure out how to cheat in software/process-node/whatever and I’ll consider them.
    - Funnyduck99 4y ago
      i think some people exaggerate their performance gains but the battery life they provide is ridiculous
    - ohgodplsno 4y ago
      They're not a ridiculously large jump, not on the overall scale of performance. There's nothing in an M1 that we couldn't do before, or haven't done before. High end SoCs have always had insane performance. However, slap literally any high end CPU of today on a SoC and you get the same results. Apple didn't invent new tech, didn't create performance out of thin air. However, they did just force you to buy a new $2000 machine next time you want to upgrade in 3 years because it's a single, monolithic block. >Let me know when other manufacturers figure out how to cheat in software/process-node/whatever and I’ll consider them. Unfortunately, they all accept to be part of a greater ecosystem that doesn't attempt to fuck you over by being un-upgradable and incompatible with each other, so cheating is out of the way.
      - mwint 4y ago
        > slap literally any high end CPU of today on a SoC and you get the same results. They should do that! > they did just force you to buy a new $2000 machine next time you want to upgrade in 3 years because it's a single, monolithic block. You’re absolutely right. I love my really fast, cold-running, forever-battery monolithic block. I’m very happy to pay ($2000/365/3 = $1.82) per day for it, minus the resale value it’ll still have. I understand the value of the ideals regarding end-user upgrades, but at the end of the day the tradeoffs just don’t make sense for me.
- drvdevd 4y ago
  I hope you are correct as I’m all for competition and don’t really care about Architectures. In my own experience it’s the thermals and power use that are the most impressive parts or the M-series.
Maursault 4y ago
> But M1 did provide fundamental increase in performance. No it didn't. Look at the Mac mini benchmarks.[0] It is a smooth curve of increasing performance from the oldest models up to the M1. Performance is increasing faster, as should be expected, but the increases in performance from model to model are incremental, always resulting in "experts" being surprised and disappointed. M1 Mac mini is not ten or five times faster than the 2018 Mac mini, and not even twice as fast. It is 26% faster in multicore performance and 36% faster in single core performance. These are increments, not massive leaps in performance. [0] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac-mini-late-2020 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac-mini-late-2020
- ericmay 4y ago
  I'm not sure if this changes anything here but when I think about performance at least for laptops but even for other products I think not just actual CPU operations but energy efficiency as well. I do agree that Apple's CPU releases are incremental updates (and mostly always have been), but when I used an M-series Mac for the first time it was a step grade upgrade from the previous gen even if it's somehow not accounted for in CPU performance metrics (though I think it will be if you account for energy as well).
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > I think not just actual CPU operations but energy efficiency as well. Since when? Seriously. Since the first Apple Silicon release, undoubtedly.
    - 2fast4you 4y ago
      Yup. Apple really set the bar. I’ve never expected battery life like this from my laptop. Now that I know I can get the same(or better) performance with much higher efficiency, I’m never going back. My laptop doesn’t heat up anymore. It doesn’t die. If it has fans, they’re absolutely silent. All this, and I haven’t had to change my workload at all.
      - 4y ago

But M1 did provide fundamental increase in performance. It had only 4 performance cores, yet it could build my code 1.5 times faster than the mightiest i9 of the time.

merb 4y ago

tbf the mightiest i9 mobile chip at the time was pretty bad, thermal wise and throttled extremly fast, besides that it was basically offered for ultrabooks... I mean the m1 did draw only half or even less power than the mightiest i9 mobile chip at the time (and still does lol)

ohgodplsno 4y ago

The M1 is fast for a few reasons: * It uses a fabrication process that noone has gotten their hands on yet. These have always been massive jumps, and giving access to that node to AMD and Intel gets them to similar performance (actually, they already are at similar performance with the same gen). * You're buying an un-upgradeable SoC. Soldered on everything means fast interconnect, while others have to play ball with standards that allow me to change components whenever I want. * It's a pretty damn good CPU. So, out of these three, Apple is responsible for 1/3. Dump an i9 on a SoC with a 3nm process and it'll eat the M1 alive. There's no "fundamental" increase.

seniorivn 4y ago
the fab process is their for grabs not by accident, they made the right call to invest in a longterm relationship with tsmc long time ago, so they have dibs on all cutting edge tech. un-upgradable SoC is a strategic design choice so which is basically part of the third reason which is their responsibility as you pointed out. So basically their success with m1,m2, etc is a well done implementation of a very ambitious strategy to disrupt the market. I don't see why it should be disputed.
hedgehog 4y ago
I'm not sure this is true, looking at say the i7-1260P in the XPS 13 it appears to turn in performance similar to the base M2 and half the battery life. M2 Max is twice as fast as the i7 and still 2x-3x the battery life, though also twice as expensive. I don't see any case that Intel's designs are somehow better than anyone else's let alone enough to "eat alive" any competitor design on equal process.
brookst 4y ago
I think you’re saying I shouldn’t be impressed that my M1 machine is much faster than my previous Intel machine, while having 3x the battery life, because Apple cheated or something. I don’t care. I’m impressed.
- mwint 4y ago
  Yep. A lot of this thread feels like I’m being gaslit into believing the M1 machines were not the ridiculously huge jumps we all knew they were at the time. I don’t really care about benchmarks, these things have allowed me to do twice the work with half as much pain. That’s not incremental. Maybe they’re not great processors and it’s just Apple cheating in software/process-node/whatever. Great! Let me know when other manufacturers figure out how to cheat in software/process-node/whatever and I’ll consider them.
  - Funnyduck99 4y ago
    i think some people exaggerate their performance gains but the battery life they provide is ridiculous
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    They're not a ridiculously large jump, not on the overall scale of performance. There's nothing in an M1 that we couldn't do before, or haven't done before. High end SoCs have always had insane performance. However, slap literally any high end CPU of today on a SoC and you get the same results. Apple didn't invent new tech, didn't create performance out of thin air. However, they did just force you to buy a new $2000 machine next time you want to upgrade in 3 years because it's a single, monolithic block. >Let me know when other manufacturers figure out how to cheat in software/process-node/whatever and I’ll consider them. Unfortunately, they all accept to be part of a greater ecosystem that doesn't attempt to fuck you over by being un-upgradable and incompatible with each other, so cheating is out of the way.
    - mwint 4y ago
      > slap literally any high end CPU of today on a SoC and you get the same results. They should do that! > they did just force you to buy a new $2000 machine next time you want to upgrade in 3 years because it's a single, monolithic block. You’re absolutely right. I love my really fast, cold-running, forever-battery monolithic block. I’m very happy to pay ($2000/365/3 = $1.82) per day for it, minus the resale value it’ll still have. I understand the value of the ideals regarding end-user upgrades, but at the end of the day the tradeoffs just don’t make sense for me.
drvdevd 4y ago
I hope you are correct as I’m all for competition and don’t really care about Architectures. In my own experience it’s the thermals and power use that are the most impressive parts or the M-series.

Maursault 4y ago

> But M1 did provide fundamental increase in performance. No it didn't. Look at the Mac mini benchmarks.[0] It is a smooth curve of increasing performance from the oldest models up to the M1. Performance is increasing faster, as should be expected, but the increases in performance from model to model are incremental, always resulting in "experts" being surprised and disappointed. M1 Mac mini is not ten or five times faster than the 2018 Mac mini, and not even twice as fast. It is 26% faster in multicore performance and 36% faster in single core performance. These are increments, not massive leaps in performance. [0] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac-mini-late-2020 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac-mini-late-2020

ericmay 4y ago
I'm not sure if this changes anything here but when I think about performance at least for laptops but even for other products I think not just actual CPU operations but energy efficiency as well. I do agree that Apple's CPU releases are incremental updates (and mostly always have been), but when I used an M-series Mac for the first time it was a step grade upgrade from the previous gen even if it's somehow not accounted for in CPU performance metrics (though I think it will be if you account for energy as well).
- Maursault 4y ago
  > I think not just actual CPU operations but energy efficiency as well. Since when? Seriously. Since the first Apple Silicon release, undoubtedly.
  - 2fast4you 4y ago
    Yup. Apple really set the bar. I’ve never expected battery life like this from my laptop. Now that I know I can get the same(or better) performance with much higher efficiency, I’m never going back. My laptop doesn’t heat up anymore. It doesn’t die. If it has fans, they’re absolutely silent. All this, and I haven’t had to change my workload at all.
    - 4y ago